


Pistolwhip Contigo

by EzekielJK



Category: Original Work, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: 2018, America, Anger, Anger Management, California, Cars, Crime Fighting, Crimes & Criminals, Explicit Language, Family, Food, Gangs, Gen, Ghetto, Grief/Mourning, Gun Violence, Hate Crimes, Hispanic Character, Latin, Latino Character, Modern Era, Nicaragua, Not actually about spiderman, Poverty, Racism, Real Life, Sad, Siblings, Slums, Superheroes, Teen Angst, Teenagers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vigilantism, its loosely inspired by that, okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 13:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30073152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EzekielJK/pseuds/EzekielJK
Summary: "I was always told that, if you had superpowers, you had some great responsibility to use them. Maybe that's true, but what do you do when someone you love is killed in a drive-by? What do you do when your only superpower is a 9mm pistol?"





	1. Straight outta Dress ‘n’ More

**Author's Note:**

> This work was loosely inspired by my distaste for superheroes seemingly getting off easy, even though they do just as much evil as the supposed "bad guy" half of the time. It was out of this that I thought to myself "what if Spider-Man had no powers and lived in the ghettos of Southern California? What if his only power was access to a firearm?" Better yet, I wanted to address the issues of those who got involved with the "supervillains." If Peter Parker could cripple another 17-year-old who probably had a family of their own, what does that say about the types of evil we are fighting
> 
> This is my first work on Ao3 but it's been published here and there on other platforms.

I woke up in the middle of the night again to a Honda Civic blasting banda music. It’s like these jokers seem to go by at 1:00 am every night just to screw with us. Regardless, it doesn’t bother me that much since I’m used to it. Most people are too. That’s just the way it is.

I woke up later that morning to Mama vacuuming my room while (poorly) singing along to her own flavor of Spanish music. “Mijo,” she started, “You sleep the entire day away. Get up already!” Her accent makes me chuckle sometimes but she had a point. It was 11:00 am but its not like I had anywhere to go. I don’t need to be at work until later and my friends were probably busy. I struggled to get out of bed without crashing into Mama’s vacuum cleaner. “Okay-okay, Ma. I’m up!” 

After getting dressed, I lumbered over to the bathroom, still getting my bearings from being woken up. I look at myself in the mirror. A lot of people have called me a “fake-Hispanic” because I look white but that doesn’t change the fact that my parents are both from Managua, Nicaragua. I try to use that to my advantage since people seem to be getting a whole lot more hostile towards “them illegals” these days. Truth is that everyone in the Valazquez family with the exception of my Papi looks this way, “guero.” I groggily brushed my teeth, combed my hair and walked in the kitchen to have breakfast.

My sister Maria was sitting at the dinner table with her earbuds on, watching some makeup gurus sell her stuff on her iPhone. She had brown hair that went down to her shoulders and brown eyes. I sometimes joked with her calling her “Dora the Explorer” seeing that she sometimes resembled the kid from that old cartoon. She even would wear a purple backpack to school every day. Noticing me out of the corner of her eye, she pulls out an earbud to yell “Morning Martin!” Maria has always been pretty happy for some reason. I assume that it’s because she’s only fourteen and hasn’t had to deal with the “real world” yet. I looked into the pantry to find my cereal but it wasn’t where I put it. “Oh, the Cookie Crisp is over here.” chimes Maria, shaking the box and putting her own bowl down. 

I sat down at the table next to her with my bowl. “Dang Maria, steal my cereal, why don’t you?” I joked with her. I never did have an issue with her having any of my stuff. “Sorry, I left you some, though.” she responded. “It’s really okay. I guess I gotta be nice to you anyways since your quinceñeda is coming up anyways.” I wasn’t lying. The Valazquez family always had an unwritten tradition of being unrealistically nice to each other leading up to a birthday and this next one was even bigger. In a few days, Maria would turn fifteen and be a fully-fledged woman. Does that change anything? Nope. But is it important? Heck, yeah.

Maria’s face lit up at the mention of her fifteenth birthday while struggling to swallow her cereal. “Right! I just got my dress yesterday, but it’s still at the store. Can you pick it up for me? It’s at that dress shop down the street. Mama and Papi said they’re busy but I really want to try it on.” I really didn’t want to do anything on my day off but I agreed to help. “Thank you!” shouted Maria. I figured that I can be my same annoying self after the party.

After breakfast, I went back to my room, passing my younger brother Paco’s room. He usually keeps the door closed but today it was cracked open a tiny bit. Paco has always been a weird guy. He’s only seventeen but he constantly tries to convince people he’s tougher than he actually is. He’s super skinny and not that strong but it doesn’t stop him. Back when we both went to the same highschool, I would constantly have to break up fights he started or rescue some poor girl that he decided to hit on for the day. I love my brother, but sometimes he’s an idiot. Really, the only thing that actually gets to me is when he takes my stuff and it just so happened that I let him borrow my car last night and he never gave back my keys.

Realizing that my keys weren’t in my room like they usually were, I walked back to Paco’s room to see if he had them and nudged his door open. I looked around the dimly-lit room. I started poking around his room, trying not to disturb too much, looking for my keys. I pulled the comforter for his bed back but I definitely didn’t find my keys. Instead, something large and heavy rolled out of the bed and fell to the floor, landing with a loud thud. It was a gun. Paco was hiding some pistol I had never seen before in his room. Paco, wearing his finest white tank top and cargo shorts, came running into his room to investigate the noise. “What are you doing, dude?” Paco said in a half-accusatory tone. I didn’t bother to answer. “What is this?” I asked. “Why the heck do you have a gun?!” 

“Bro, relax,” started Paco, “it’s for protection. What are you gonna do when people start to screw with you? This is just so we can be intimidating to those guys.” “Intimidating?” I spoke with obvious indifference “The only people you’re ‘intimidating’ is your own family. These things are dangerous!” 

“Martin relax, I’m not an idiot. It’s gonna be fine.”

“Oh, you’re  _ not _ an idiot. You had me worried there.” I snorted back, not buying into his reasoning for bringing a weapon into our home. Paco began to stutter out some clever response, “Y-you know” he began, “Fuck you.”

_ Straight fire _ .

Out of my whole family, Paco is the only one who curses in normal speech. Mama has thrown enough slippers around to get the point across, “No cursing in my house!” I’ve had it ingrained in my head by this point so I tend to stick with the classic “heck,” “dang,” and “freaking” varieties. I guess Paco needs a few more chanclas to the head.

Sighing, I asked Paco for my keys so I could get out of this situation. I probably should tell Mama but I would feel bad about ratting him out so I left it, hopped into my car -- a run-down Toyota Corolla from the 90s -- and started the engine. It only took two tries. Pulling out of my driveway, I got a glimpse of our house. Sure, it’s pretty tiny with off-white colored walls and a chain link fence but it's still home. Home for me is located in Southern California, “SoCal” for short. A few friends of mine from out-of-state have told me that they thought California was supposed to be laid-back and all about surfing. Maybe that’s true but not where I’m from. This is the ghetto and we all know it. Nobody walks outside without a stick or some kind of weapon in case they meet a crazed tweaker or someone else equally violent on the street. (It just came to my attention that some people might not know what some of these words mean. “Tweaker,” in this case, means “meth addict.”) I drove up to the nearby strip mall, passing a group of thugs in oversized sports jerseys and baseball caps. They don’t tend to bother people much unless provoked. Do  _ not  _ provoke them. Pulling into the parking lot, I looked up to see a dilapidated storefront. “Dress ‘n’ More.” I walked into the store and instantly made eye contact with the elderly Vietnamese man behind the counter. Some quick haggling later and I walked out of the shop and started approaching my car, fluffy pink dress in hand.

“Hey!” a voice yelled from my left. I turned just enough to see the man shouting without making it obvious. It was one of the very same gangsters that I spotted while driving in. “Hey!” he shouted again. “You got money for a scratcher?” I shrug him off and keep moving. Luckily, he doesn’t keep asking. Usually they’re more persistent on getting hand-outs. Maybe today is different.


	2. Chang’s Tomato

Regardless of how different things might have felt earlier, today was just like any others. After dropping off Maria’s dress at home with joyous applause and confessions of undying gratitude, I had to head off to work. Every week, I would have the same basic routine: grab my keys from the kitchen counter, unlock my car door, try to get the car engine to turn over by the third try, drive out of the neighborhood, avoid the sketchier areas and pull up to work. If my commute to work was more interesting, I’d talk about it but it was always the same. Maybe I’d spot a crackhead huddled behind a warehouse store or maybe my car would take only two tries to get going but it was always the same. I eventually pulled up to my job; _ the beautiful, the honorable, the venerable… _ King Burger.

You read that right. I assume that mildly copyright-infringing title is due to the owner wanting to cash in on the more popular brand’s clout. That owner would be Chang, a nearly-silent southeast-Asian man whom I assume is about nine-hundred years old judging by his appearance. I have no idea what his last name is. When I was hired, he only told me that and I never got to ask any more questions about the guy. He’s a shorter man, clocking in at roughly five feet tall, that seems to have a singular focus at all times; keep the business going. Mr. Chang always seemed to have a strange personality. At points, he would seem like the sweetest man on the planet, giving discounts to various customers and not minding smaller inconveniences. At other points, he would shove employees out of his way and take over himself if he felt that they weren’t up to standards. Some of my coworkers hated him because he made them feel kind of uneasy but I loved him to death. Something about how deliberately he made every action was fascinating to me, probably because I suck at controlling my own emotions. Whenever he wasn’t hopping in front of a fry cook or snatching bags of trash from an underpaid highschooler, he would periodically watch over the front of the shop.

I walked in as per usual with my black chef’s apron in a bundle in my hand. The door had barely shut before I had made eye contact with Mr. Chang. He looked at his watch before looking at me, eyes squinting and darkened. 

“Twelve thirty-five” he said to me in a long and droning tone. It took me a while to understand what he meant through his accent. I was supposed to be at work at 12:30 p.m. exactly but I must’ve been five minutes late. It was 12:35 now. “I’m so sorry Mr. Chang, I’ll get started right now” I replied. I found my way to the bathroom in the back of the restaurant, the metallic sheen of the dirty bathroom always helped shine a strange glow on the large amounts of graffiti that littered the walls. I hopped in one of the stalls to change into my work uniform: pants, shirt, apron and silly hat.

I walked back out and into the kitchen. As if the restroom wasn’t depressing enough, the kitchen was even more dreary. Almost everything was made of stainless steel: steel pots, steel pans, steel cookers and even a steel ceiling. The only thing to break up the monotonous grey tone of the room would be the occasional burst of orange flame from the stove burners. Even the smell was off-putting. I actually like the food here but that’s probably because I’ve been coming here since I was a kid. Regardless, the kitchen always smelled like a cross between oversalted meat and a janitor supply closet. Coincidentally, I had to pass the cleaning closet every work day to punch in.

After punching in on our late-70s timecard machine, I hopped in the cooking line. Orders came fast and never seemed to stop. There was no room for failure because you’d inevitably get an upset mother named Karen or Susan shouting at whoever was unlucky enough to man the register at the time. To be honest, those people are usually the most entertaining part of my day even if they really had no reason to be upset. 

My job sucked but for no flaw of its own. It was just so boring. I had gotten so used to how to grill the patties that I could practically do it in my sleep. The pay wasn’t even that good either and the hours were just enough to be considered a job. I just needed to get a job if I wanted to stay at my parents' house. I’m sure that there’s something that I actually enjoy doing, but mark my words, grilling burgers for Karen and her sons Brayden, Zayden and Okayden is not for me.

As I was grilling, I noticed Mr. Chang watching my coworkers and I as we worked. I could never figure out what we were doing (or not doing) that he felt the need to watch us for but it was that awkward intensity that I found so fascinating about him. Like clockwork, another disgruntled customer came rushing to the front counter, burger in hand, demanding she speak to someone. I looked around. For some reason, there wasn’t anyone manning the front at the moment but someone needed to address the lady. I turned to my coworkers in the kitchen and they all seemed like they didn’t want to handle it. The guy closest to me who was also on the grill whispers to me, “You go. I’ll cover it here.”

I walked over to the counter and greeted the lady in my best, plastered-on smile. “What’s the matter, miss?” I asked. She had short hair that only covered the side of her badly dyed hair. She began “I am  _ so  _ upset.” she spouted, “How could you possibly have put tomatoes in my sandwich? Don’t you know that I’m allergic to tomatoes?”

“Did you ask for no tomatoes, ma’am?” I asked in a tired, monotonous tone. I deal with enough of these idiots to have my voice match my smile.

“No! You should ask the CUSTOMER if they want tomatoes instead of just giving them out,” she responds.

“Isn’t it pretty much understood that a hamburger has tomatoes?”

She hesitated for a moment before doubling-down on her staunch, anti-tomato rant. By this point I had realized that she had already eaten most of the burger (but left the tomato, of course). I was starting to get mad too. I guess it was obvious because Mr. Chang suddenly bolted into the conversation from his post behind me, speaking as if his broken English was actually perfect. 

“How much you spend?” he asked, addressing the woman.

“$5.95” she said, almost as if she had the number memorized. Mr. Chang immediately hopped over to the unmanned register, punched a few buttons and grabbed six dollars. “Here. Take. Have better day” he says in broken English as he hands the lady her money. As she storms off, I’m confused. Isn’t this the man who’s so caught up with money that he was upset at me coming in less than five minutes late? 

I asked him, “Um, sir, why’d you do that? She got a free meal, exactly what she wanted, and she’ll probably do it again.” 

“Customer always right.” He says in an unusual display, “Best be nice. I customer too other places.”

My shift ended later that day but I still never got why Mr. Chang felt that it was so important to say that. Personally, I would have just let the lady stay upset and review-bomb us on Yelp over her godforsaken tomato. Some people don’t deserve to be waited on hand and foot. But, ironically, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing for my sister in a few days. 


	3. The Quinceanera

All the preparations had been made; Maria’s party was finally happening. The plan was to have the main celebration in a nearby banquet hall. Then, after the main event, we would move the reception to the local park for more partying and games. (To be perfectly fair, the park is mostly to give all the people with kids an excuse to let their little gremlins run wild and give mom and dad some peace.) Ideally, everything would go smoothly and all of us would have a good time but that was basically the opposite of what happened.

Let’s start at the beginning, I feel like these types of stories work better like that.

In the morning we all started getting ready. Paco and I were in a mad rush to grab our suits and ties. I had accidentally grabbed his suit coat which led to a minor squabble before Maria came walking over, still only wearing a t-shirt, jeans and Converse sneakers. “Guys, c’mon let’s go!” she chimes in a cheerful manner. “Figure it out because we don’t have much time.”

“Who put you in charge? And where the hell is your dress?” Paco retorts before returning to grab the coat from off my back.

“Mama sent me to grab you guys. And my dress is already there because we didn’t want it to get messed up. Anyways let’s gooooo!” She began walking away before she had even finished speaking. She was obviously excited for the day ahead of her so I eventually handed Paco’s coat back and got ready myself. The entire Valazquez family eventually piled in the family sudan and drove off to the reception hall. The drive was surprisingly quiet although we were all huddled together. The silence was only occasionally broken by Maria who was eagerly trying to me a funny meme she found on her phone.

Once we got there, the reception was beautiful. The reception hall didn’t allow for alcohol so our tios were a little upset. Well, they were upset until they found out that they could have all the Modelo they wanted once we got to the park. Other than that, the party went really well. While a lot of quinceaneras have a huge amount of rules and are super fancy, those are Mexican quinceaneras. We’re nicaraguense. We do things pretty different. For starters, my family really isn’t down to spend thousands of dollars for any party, regardless of the occasion. We just can’t afford it. Instead, Maria’s quinceanera was really just a bunch of tear-filled speeches by distant relatives with balloons, dancing, and pretty dresses. As is typical with family reunions, the very second that I walked in, I was immediately swarmed by long-lost relatives kissing me on the cheek and speaking in vaguely-Spanish gibberish. We tried to organize the biggest events of the party to be at the reception hall so that the second part at the park could be more chill and the kids could go play.

As the reception began, my family found our seats while my Papi grabbed the mic found near the center-back of the hall. After struggling to power on the microphone (and some deafening feedback), he managed to get the crowd’s attention and began to speak. “ _ Buenos dias todos _ . Welcome everyone. Thank you all for being here. I’m very honored to have the opportunity to be able to speak here. My daughter Maria is finally turning fifteen today. My baby is the last of my  _ ninos _ to grow up and,” he paused to turn to face his daughter who was now smiling ear to ear in her favorite pink dress, “Maria, I love you.  _ Te amo mija. _ ” He raised a glass of sparkling cider (the same cider that caused a minor struggle with my uncles) and yelled in a deep, resounding voice “ _ ¡Salud!” _ Immediately after the toast had ended, the room erupted in celebration and music. Dancing quickly began near the center of the room even though there was virtually no room between the white tables.

I’m not gonna lie, that party was a lot of fun. If I got the opportunity to do it over, I probably would take it. I just can’t get what happened afterwards out of my head. You see, once the party at the reception hall had ended, we all started funneling into our cars to head to the local park. Our car was already cramped from shoving Maria’s huge dress inside it, let alone fitting my family inside it as well. It was a pretty short drive, only like a few miles, before arriving at the park. In what seemed like a few seconds, the party had been completely transported to the new venue: cheap, plastic tablecloths had been draped over the cement tables, speakers began blasting music, and cases of beer were laying around the edges of the party. The picnic area we were sitting at was faced near the street so that it made it easy for our friends and family to spot us. It was nice.

Once the party had kicked into high gear, my mama realized that there was not enough shade for the amount of people attending. I was sitting around eating cake, talking with Paco and my cousin Julio when she came running at me like it was the end of the world. “ _ Mijos _ , we need a new tent. Get it from the car.” My mom was known among my siblings for making pretty insignificant issues sound like they were more important. Paco and I attempted to persuade her that it wasn’t all that important (mostly because we didn’t want to get up) but she didn’t even bother to listen. Worth a shot, I guess.

We jaywalked across the street to the parking lot we had parked in earlier. In the distance, I saw a lime green Dodge Charger slowly approaching down the straight street. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. When we got to the car, Paco attempted to open the trunk of the car but needed to unlock it. I went around to the driver’s side of the car to unlock the trunk when I paused to admire the party from a distance. I could easily pick out Maria in her pink dress among the sea of people in the green and grey backdrop. The rumble of the approaching Charger began getting louder. I unlocked the door and bent over to unlatch the trunk. I don’t know why but I looked over my shoulder for a second to look back at the party I was missing. Just in that moment, I witnessed the Charger slow down to a crawl. A man leaned out of the window with something in his hand.

He had a gun.


	4. Aftermath

I ran into the chaos. I made eye-contact with the driver as he drove away, a trashy white guy in a grey tank top and a Raiders cap. He wasn’t the one holding the gun since that was the guy in the passenger seat. The Dodge Charger immediately sped off as the driver began screaming at the man with the gun. If I was closer, I would have jumped onto his hood but he had sped off before I got the chance. The sounds of children screaming was deafening while a ton of people were on their phones calling ambulances and police. Roughly five shots had gone off and a few bullet holes left their marks on the tables and sidewalk while some found their mark. My cousin Julio had been grazed on his shoulder by a bullet that eventually landed a few feet behind him. Another bullet had nearly struck my seven-month-old nephew who was eating Cheerios in his stroller a few moments earlier. Luckily, it missed his skull by less than an inch leaving a clean hole in his stroller.

However, one bullet made it to the biggest target in the party.

I ran over to Maria but there was already a crowd of crying observers. She had been shot directly in her face. The pool of blood had already started to congeal in the few seconds it took me to run over from the car. She didn’t look like herself when I got a good look at the damage. Her body was crumpled over herself and her face had been distorted and warped by the carnage. She was this super happy kid that was full of life but now, she looked like pictures of Jews in the Holocaust from history class. To be real, I still don’t want to talk about it.

You know how in all the movies, whenever someone is about to die, they have this moment where they get to say something that’s really important to the main character? It’s usually something that gives him a reason to fight or to change his life. Well, turns out that’s not how it works in the real world. What really happens is that someone dies and then they’re gone. No one gets these powerful moments with someone, they just die and you’ve gotta figure out what to do with all the experiences that they left with you. The problem is this. What if you can’t figure it out? What if terrible crap happens for no reason to good girls by screwed up losers?

Anyways, that’s what was running through my mind at Maria’s funeral. Of course, I couldn’t bring any of this up to my family since they were already going through a lot and I didn’t want to make everyone more upset. Paco already started losing it, more than what was normal for him. Even in the car ride back from the church where we had her funeral, Paco was already turning any insignificant thing into an attack on him and that everyone sucks. To be honest, I don’t really disagree.

As the months passed, things went back to normal for the most part. We cleaned out Maria’s room and boxed up her old stuff in the garage. Eventually, we converted her old room into an exercise room (and by “exercise,” we really mean it was a room for holding random crap we didn’t want to see anymore. Fitting since we rarely talked about Maria these days like her memory was, itself, something we had thrown away). Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t being naive, we just really didn’t want to think about losing someone so close to us so we had found ways around it. For the most part, we had divided our lives up into two distinct categories: when we were “with Maria” and when we weren’t. The stories “with Maria” always seemed better; joyful and full of life, kind of like she was. The stories after the fact seemed tainted, like we were living in a post-apocalyptic world where evil robots had taken over or something. In a word, it sucked. In two words, it really sucked.

While it sucked for me and for my parents, it seemed like Paco took it the worst. Once Maria was gone, it seemed like he was trying to retreat away from the family as much as possible and distract himself with pointless crap or hang out with dumb friends. Like I said earlier, he would get super defensive and lash out at anyone showing him the slightest amount of attention. I had met abused chihuahuas at the shelter that were less explosive than my own brother.

I don’t even think that I had handled things any differently. I really tried to “put on a happy face” and deal with it like the rest of my family but I would find myself sitting around, flipping through my phone listening to music all the time I was home. I didn’t want to put up with life so I decided to distract myself with Fifa, 2k, Instagram and XXXTentacion. At the very least I wasn’t making everyone else angry like Paco. I just despised having to deal with my emotions.

Dinner was supposed to be a time where we could be open about how we were feeling, at least that’s what Mama intended. But with a seat permanently empty, it seemed more of a challenge to finish what was on our plates without starting a fight. This dinner was no exception.

Mama had a habit of preparing a full meal and yelling “Dinner!” at the top of her lungs the moment it had come off the stove. Back when we had Maria, it was always my sister’s job to set the table since she was the youngest. Now that that changed, Paco was given the duty.

I walked in maybe 45 seconds after Mama had called, partially because it always took some time for the meal to be served and partially because I didn’t want to hang around people today. The meal was gallo pinto, slices of queso fresco, homemade tortillas, and orange soda. Usually my mom doesn’t fully commit to the Nicaraguan thing and makes spaghetti or something but I guess she was in the mood for it today. I honestly couldn’t remember the time we had gallo pinto since we lost Maria.

We all sat down and began eating. My Papi began making small talk by asking how his son’s days were. Paco and I mostly shrugged off the question by giving short, vague answers and returning to our food. Papi obviously got the message that we weren’t interested in speaking today so he shifted his focus to Mama.

“Did you hear about Julio?” he asked mom as she was using a tortilla to shovel more rice onto her fork. “He died two days ago.”

My mom stopped eating and stared for a split second. “What happened?” she replied, fork and tortilla still in hand. “Another shooting,” Papi said matter-of-fact. “They say it was some guy in a green car who did it.” “Oh” was the only thing my mom uttered before returning to her meal. “Seriously?!” shouted Paco. “Yeah, holy crap. Another one?!” I said seconds after him. “Martin!” Mama responded, upset that I got heated at the table and already reaching for her slipper.

“Sorry Mama!” I replied “But that’s nuts, I saw Julio on the same day as…” I realized then that I was about to reference the day that Maria died and caught myself before saying it. 

“Yes, it’s probably the same people from then too since it's the same car.” said Papi.

“Cop’s won’t do nothing about it too I guess.” Paco interjected, “They never do about stuff like this.” The sad truth was that he was right. A lot of drive-by shootings happen all over town nearly every day. At this point, they’re so common that only a single cop shows up to investigate it at a time and never try to stop those responsible. For a lot of them that I’ve seen, they seem more interested in saying that they did their jobs on their little car computer than actually doing it.

“Someone should do something about it.” I muttered. “What are you gonna do then, Mr. Hero? Cook them a burger?” Paco taunted. “You’re no Spiderman.” It was obvious that a line cook at King Burger didn’t have a whole lot of power in this scenario but neither did a jobless 17-year-old.

I don’t know why but that “Mr. Hero” comment resonated with me. Maybe I’m not a superhero with powers but I needed to do something because my family is literally being shot up and the cops won’t help. “Screw you, Paco. If I get the chance, I’ll make sure these guys can’t do it again.” I got hit with a slipper for saying that to Paco but I meant it. I didn’t care. I was gonna find a way to get back at the monsters that took my little sister away from me. I didn’t quite know what I was doing but I‘d figure it out.


End file.
